What was more exhausting, I ask Keira Knightley: that five-year period in her career when she made a bazillion massive films, including Bend It Like Beckham, Atonement, Pirates of the Caribbean, Pride & Prejudice and Love Actually, or... early motherhood? “Early motherhood!” she answers instantly, without a blink. “There is nothing that can prepare you for that level of exhaustion if you happen to have a sleepless child.”
Knightley, 40, and her husband, the musician James Righton, tried “everything” to get their first daughter Edie, now 10, to sleep through the night. They finally succeeded with a very lovely bedtime routine, which has now, years later, resulted in something completely unintended but quite special: Knightley’s debut children’s book, I Love You Just the Same. Over a five-month period, Knightley would draw a picture every time Edie went to sleep, so that when she woke up, she’d know her mum had been thinking of her. “It turned into a kind of dialogue between us, where she’d say, ‘OK, can there be a bird? Can there be a cat?’”
